For 35 years, Howard Caldwell was Indy's Walter Cronkite

Nelson Price
File photo of Howard C. Caldwell Jr. former Channel 6 news anchor.

To many of us, he was the Hoosier version of Walter Cronkite.

For an astounding stretch of 35 years, Howard Caldwell was a news anchor at WRTV-6, the ABC affiliate in Indianapolis. The station was called WFBM and was an NBC affiliate when he made his debut on its evening news in 1959.

When the Coliseum at the Indiana State Fairgrounds exploded on Halloween night 1963, Caldwell was at the anchor desk. Often called the “dean of the Indiana newscasters,” Caldwell was still an anchor during the early 1990s when he also was putting together a periodic feature series titled, appropriately, “Howard’s Indiana.”

It’s hard to imagine a TV news anchor more rooted in a local community.

That was instantly apparent whenever I had the opportunity to turn the tables and interview the Hall of Fame newsman about his broadcast career or his books, which included “Indianapolis” (IU Press, 1990) and “The Golden Age of Indianapolis Theaters” (IU Press, 2010).

Obit:Howard Caldwell, revered Indianapolis journalist, dies at 92

Howard seldom let you forget he grew up in Irvington, thrived as sports editor for Howe High School’s newspaper and cherished his alma mater, Butler University, where he served terms on the board of trustees.

He always seemed to prefer talking about those aspects of his life than the achievements that brought him attention beyond our borders. In 1966, for example, Caldwell became the first U.S. journalist to interview Indira Gandhi, the newly elected premier of India.

Knowing that I grew up in Indy watching him on TV, Caldwell loved to swap insights about our hometown. But he didn’t romanticize or sanitize, whether in conversation, during his broadcast reports or in his books. Invariably, he was level-headed, perceptive and honest.

“Rather than saying I tried to capture Indianapolis as its best and worst,” he told me about his “Indianapolis” book, “I hope that I have captured the city in its oldest and newest.”

Both the old and new intrigued Howard endlessly and equally. His lavishly illustrated book about vintage theaters, vaudeville houses and movie palaces drew on his personal collection of anecdotes and rare photos that he had been amassing for decades.

Not only could he describe the long-gone Lyric Theater that once dominated the 100 block of North Illinois Street (it opened in 1912 and eventually expanded to accommodate 2,000 seats with a balcony), Howard could humanize the history by drawing upon his own long life. His grandmother warned him as a boy during the 1930s to steer clear of the Lyric, he told me, because the theater had staged revues of scantily clad dancers for previous generations of patrons.

The history he witnessed — local, national and international — was staggering. During World War II, Caldwell was a radio operator on a Navy minesweeper in the South Pacific.  A stint as a newspaper reporter in Hagerstown, Ind., was sandwiched between further Navy service during the Korean War.  Next came tours of duty at a radio station, then a TV station, in Terre Haute.

With his broadcast work in Indianapolis, he won awards for pieces that reflected interests that stretched far beyond sports and theaters. Two diverse examples: The interview with Gandhi was undertaken along with a documentary on hunger in India. In 1989, he won acclaim for a documentary about relations between the Indianapolis police and local residents.

Regardless of where Howard was located while he was reporting, for many of us the setting we associated with the Hoosier broadcaster was our living rooms.

When Caldwell started anchoring the Channel 6 news in 1959 — replacing a colleague who had a fatal heart attack 20 minutes before airtime — the evening newscast was only 10 minutes, followed by a five-minute weather report. Caldwell’s career flourished into an era of much-expanded local news of one hour or longer.

“I enjoyed it back then, and I enjoy it now,” he said. At that point in the conversation, I wasn’t certain whether he was referring to the news business or to his hometown.

Probably both.

Price is the author of “Indiana Legends: Famous Hoosiers from Johnny Appleseed to David Letterman,” “Indianapolis Then and Now” and other books. He is the host of “Hoosier History Live” on WICR-FM (88.7).